It is very quiet and rated at .5amp (6w). I tested it at 12v, pumping up a 23 inch high, 1/4" id tube. It pumped 48 gallons per hour. Is that a sufficient water flow for the Home Depot bucket swamp cooler?

A car battery will be fine for testing. Just don't run the battery too low. Try not to run your cooler off a car battery for more than a couple hours. Car batteries don't like to be discharged very far. Deep cycle batteries don't mind it so much.

I used 32 gallon sterilite tubs purchased from a big box store. They didn't have vertical sides, which wasn't ideal for some of the designs in this thread, but I built a PVC U that was inside the tub and several inches away from the edges, and they worked super well. The sterilite is nice because you can cut it with an exacto knife, drill it, etc.

Before the playa, I characterized it in my lab and it was very efficient for an 18" water rise and pumped plenty of water to keep our hexayurts nice and comfy It basically drew the advertised 320 mA and pumped water quite well.

None of our 3 pumps burned out, but since they're so cheap I'd brought along a spare just in case.

I used standard $0.79 light switches from the hardware store to control these. The fan was mounted on one side of the tub, on the inside, with the light switch right next to it. Cut a hole large enough for fan and switch to be accessible from inside the yurt, and taped around the hole with yurt tape to seal it off. When we woke up and started to feel warm, we simply flipped the light switch and delicious cold air started blowing. Back to sleep for 6 hours

It was mentioned earlier the need to have the bucket outside the space to be cooled. If I'm using a small ultra lite trailer like, say, an R-Pod, Egg, T@DA, or some other teardrop-type trailer...where's a good spot to run the outlet pipe to the inside? Are we talking sawing a hole in the side of the trailer?

Don't bore your friends with all your troubles. Tell your enemies instead, for they will delight in hearing about them.

Just finished my bucket cooler tonight. Will have to test the temp in the daytime tomorrow.

My comments: 1) The blue duracool pad tends to slump when it gets wet. My cylinders shortened in the bucket and widened, causing contact w/ the sides of the bucket. Keep this in mind when cutting your pads. I would have make the pad a 1/2 bit taller and a bit narrower, or maybe very slightly tapered to fit into the contours of the bucket.

I didn't want to start over, so I fixed mine by pinching a bit of outer cylinder of duracool in several places with a few small binder clips (office supplies). The small pinches eliminated some of the excess slump and kept a gap between the pad and the bucket. Also I used a few leftover strips of Duracool to put at the bottom of the bucket to raise up the cyclinder slightly.

2) The water tube "halo" tried to fall down into between the two layers of Duracool. Fixed via zip tie.

3) I used 2 rows of large holes in the bucket, because I thought it would increase evap area. The problem is I limited the water holding capacity by doing so and also, since the bucket is tapered, I increased the drippage due to the pad touching the bucket. This issue mostly resolved by #1 above, but I wish I had'nt cut holes so far down now. Or I may make another bucket, depending how my test goes.

4) I used a pretty cheap 12V pump from ebay, rated about 60 GPH, and it wets the filter fabric just fine. But I can't run this pump dry, per the instructions. Kind of worrid about a campmate not filling it up and ruining my hard work. So I added a float switch (ebay), wired into the pump and jerry rigged it inside the inner Duracool pad about 1.5 inches above the floor. When water drops to this level, the switch will turn off.

5) I need a flexible duct to run this into my trailer. The 4" PVC vent does not fit standard 4"dryer duct. The 4" Pvc fit my fan and the duracool cylinder perfectly, but I had to shop online for a specialty 5" flexible duct and it fits great over the 4" Schedule 80 coupling.

Thanks all, I'm convinced I'll have the coolest spot at my camp due to this forum.

Maybe this has been discussed in the 65 page post that this topic has grown to but here it goes anyway: have any of you experimented with running a tube from the spigot of your ice chest? I'm thinking the cold melted water dripping into the bucket may super charge the cooler and blast much colder air than normal. What do you think?

Ok, food for thought. I'm going to start mine this weekend and was looking for a way to contribute to this wonderful tool. I have a tent inside a Costco carport, am I wasting my time building the cooler if it's not going into a hexayurt or a van (something with insulation) thanks guys in advance!

Yep, Fig, that's exactly what mine looks like dry, but when the pump turns on the blue pad gets wet and vibrates slightly due to the pump and fan, the the pad sags just a little, so the halo tried to fall in between the two layers of pad. Easily fixed with zip ties though, I just zipped the halo to the top of the blue pad since the pad is porous I could push zip ties right thur it. Now it can't slide down.

jryanmcmanus wrote:Ok, food for thought. I'm going to start mine this weekend and was looking for a way to contribute to this wonderful tool. I have a tent inside a Costco carport, am I wasting my time building the cooler if it's not going into a hexayurt or a van (something with insulation) thanks guys in advance!

The original idea was so people could get some extra zzzzzz's even with the sun shinning on thier tent.

The complete exchange of air in the space evey 1 to 3 minutes means that it does'nt matter whether the space is insulated or not.

In the 60s we lived in AZ.. In the poorest built house there.. One swamp cooler cooled a large house.. If your taking you in air from a car port and into yurt your going to be cool.. Or if you want sit around the carport in mid day.. Turn to coolr onto your lounge area.. It will be much cooler then a fan only..